ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Smith's work on friendship and then look at it from several psychoanalytic perspectives. It reviews the literature on friendship in commercial societies that is based on Smith's work. Smith puts generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem together. Friendship for Smith is qualified and has a prescriptive attitude. Smith describes the change in the nature of friendship that takes place in the highly quoted following passage: Among well-disposed people, the necessity or conveniency of mutual accommodation, very frequently produces a friendship not unlike that which takes place among those who are born to live in the same family. For Freud, friendship is a manifestation of aim-inhibited sexuality. Smith speaks of friendship and love from a somewhat idealized perspective. Smith describes several qualities that are a part of friendship. Consistent with his many achievements, Smith conceptualized new forms of relatedness that served the growing needs of an era of human interaction that was necessitated by commercial relationships.
